Copyright (C) 2001-2012  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.

		      Precompiled Distributions of
			   Emacs for Windows

			    Version 24.1

			      January 1, 2011

  This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
  Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported).
  This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the
  Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided
  here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not
  accustomed to compiling programs themselves.  Corresponding source
  can be found in the parent directory in emacs-24.1.tar.gz.

  If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
  your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't
  already):

	http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html

* IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER

  If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
  Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL.  For instance,
  if you put the emacs-24.1-bin-i386.tar.gz file from this directory on
  an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of
  the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-24.1.tar.gz).

  Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
  might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
  old binaries.


* Files in this directory

  + emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip
    Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, with all lisp code and documentation
    included.

    Download this file if you want a single installation package, and
    are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After
    unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have
    Emacs add icons to the Start Menu.

    If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to
    unpack the source distribution on top of this installation.

  + emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip
    Windows binaries of Emacs-24.1, without lisp code or documentation.

    Download this file if you already have the source distribution.

    Unpack this over the top of the source distribution. It contains the
    bin subdirectory and etc/DOC file.

  + libxpm-3.5.7-w32-src.zip
    Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.7 on Windows. Contains
    a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for
    generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the
    source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from
    libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-24.1-bin-i386.zip
    and emacs-24.1-barebin-i386.zip.

* Prerequisites for running Emacs on Windows 9X

  Using Emacs in GUI mode on Windows 95/98/Me requires the UNICOWS.DLL
  dynamic library, which provides MSLU, the Microsoft Unicode Layer
  for Windows 9X.  You can freely download it from the Microsoft site.

* Image support

  Emacs 24.1 contains support for images, however for most image
  formats supporting libraries are required.  This distribution has
  been tested with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for
  Windows (http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php), and the libraries
  found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image
  formats are supported:

      PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for
      the black and white versions of the toolbar icons.

      XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org
      release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but
      can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll,
      libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll.

      PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.4 or later, which will
      be named libpng14.dll or libpng14-14.dll.  LibPNG requires zlib,
      which should come from the same source as you got libpng.
      Starting with Emacs 23.3, the precompiled Emacs binaries are
      built with libpng 1.4.x and later, and are incompatible with
      earlier versions of libpng DLLs.  So if you have libpng 1.2.x,
      the PNG support will not work, and you will have to download
      newer versions.

      JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
      which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll.

      TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll
      or libtiff.dll.

      GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be
      called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.

      SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you
      compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the
      dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome
      as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many
      sample images.

* Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format

  Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar
  file (*.tar.gz).  Because Emacs is quite large and therefore
  difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows
  binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source
  plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking
  over the top of the source distribution.  Formerly, we used the same
  .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with
  .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these
  natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip
  files.

* Distributions for non-x86 platforms

  Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older
  platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand,
  and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you
  are willing to help port Emacs 24 to 64 bit versions of Windows,
  your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list.

* Unpacking distributions

  Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file
  format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU
  programs, for example:

    Cygwin:   http://www.cygwin.com/
    GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

  Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also
  able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical
  program that is able to handle many archive formats.

  Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window.  Decide on a directory in which
  to place Emacs.  Move the distribution to that directory, and then
  unpack it as follows.

  If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar
  file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags
  to extract the files from the tar file:

    % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf -

  You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the
  modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a
  broken pipe.  These messages are harmless and you can ignore them.  On
  Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed
  form, taking up less space on disk.  Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and
  98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the
  djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one
  step:

    % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz

  You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using
  djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless).

  Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
  if you do not already have other tools to do this.

    % unzip some.zip

  The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
  if you do not already have other tools to do this.

    % unzip some.zip

  Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should
  have the following subdirectories:

	bin	etc	info	lisp	site-lisp


* Unpacking with other tools

  If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check
  the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted:

  + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will
    be unusable.  Older versions of WinZip would enable this
    translation by default when unpacking .tar files.  If you are
    using WinZip, disable it.  (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do
    not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.)

  + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3.  For example, there
    should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to
    abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking
    and Emacs will not start.

  + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser.  Some
    proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might
    like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser
    has this bug.

  + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar
    corrupts the executables.  Use the latest version from the gnuwin32
    site or another port of tar instead.

  If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are
  still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information
  below.


* Compiling from source

  If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source
  distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled
  distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed
  directions.  It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
  support to compile the source.  The port of GCC included in Cygwin
  is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble
  since some builds of GNU make aren't supported.


* Further information

  If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
  your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't
  already):

	http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html

  This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information
  about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as
  most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some
  information may not be relevant to Emacs-24.1.

  In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
  related to the Windows port of Emacs.  For information about the
  list, see this Web page:

	http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows

  To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to
  help-emacs-windows@gnu.org.  (You don't need to subscribe for that.)
  To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you
  find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as
  explained there.

  Another valuable source of information and help which should not be
  overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs.
  These are particularly good for help with general issues which aren't
  specific to the Windows port of Emacs.  The main news groups to use
  for seeking help are:

	gnu.emacs.help
	comp.emacs

  There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or
  updated Emacs packages on this group:

	gnu.emacs.sources

  Enjoy!

  Jason Rumney
  (jasonr@gnu.org)

  Most of this README was contributed by former maintainer Andrew Innes
  (andrewi@gnu.org)


This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
